


I Know Love

by ArsenicAndOldLace



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War, Family, Gen, Not Happy, Permanent Injury, Stewjon, Stewjon is space Scotland, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22070671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicAndOldLace/pseuds/ArsenicAndOldLace
Summary: Nothing changes.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 78





	I Know Love

**Author's Note:**

> Barely edited, unbetaed.

She looked similar to how he pictured his mother. She had graying red hair and blue eyes. Like 60% of the people on Stewjon. Her hands were dry and worn. Her face made him cringe. The lower part of her face had melted, sometime in the past. The rest of her body, including her hands, was covered. She sat at the diner with her walker parked nearby, and he could tell she was somewhere else in her mind. He approached her table, deliberately making his steps louder. Hearing someone coming, she looked up and jumped in her seat, then made a visible effort to calm herself. He wondered who she saw when she jumped. “Master Jedi.”

“Lady Kenobi.”

“I wasn’t sure when you’d arrive. Um, would you like some food?” Her accent was thick, made thicker by the damage to her mouth, and he had to work to figure out what she was saying. 

“Thank you, but I’m fine. I trust you know what we’re here to discuss?” 

“Yes. I got your message. I don’t think I’m able to give you what you might want.”

“We’ve hardly talked, and you don’t know me, nor I you. I only want to know the circumstances of my birth and surrender to the Jedi.”

“Even that won’t be something comforting. You’re right.” She nodded. “I don’t know you or what you want or what your like. I don’t know your first word. I never held your hand or taught you the words to your first prayer. But you must know that I gave you up for a reason, and it wasn’t just your magic that made me give you?”

“I presumed nothing. I only wish to know whatever you will tell me.” 

“Then it goes like this. Kora Abetaso, daughter of Tane-Sam and Bira Abetaso from Inaber married a miner from Karasako, Resa Kenobi. We weren’t unhappy. We lived together for seven years, and tried for five years before I became pregnant. You were wanted. Resa worked hard, and the mines moved off-planet to the moons. He lived on one of them most of the month and came home for three days a month. But I was alone. I worked as a poet for my clan, but I wasn’t close to Resa’s kin, even after seven years of marriage. My own kin and clan lived too far way for me to travel there pregnant. And there wasn’t peace. Stewjon has rarely been peaceful. Now is an exception. While you all are out there fighting, at last, we have peace. But back then, oh how the clans quarreled about land. They bought weapons from other planets, and they used them. I imagine you know of all the banned weapons?”

“I do.”

“They used them. And us, the young and old who lived and worked and ate and loved, we were caught. I know you see my face, but the rest of me wasn’t much better. I was chemically burned, and we out here aren’t the core. No medic aided me until over three days had passed. You just sat there in my womb.” He could tell she needed to say this, the history, her life. He should have known he was born in war. 

“I thought about ending the pregnancy. My body was so hurt, how could yours not be? I didn’t look at all like the woman Resa married. I barely looked like a woman at all. I lost my breasts. How would I feed you? But I knew then that you were the future. Me and Resa’s hope. Our whole world’s.”

“I pushed you out, you hurt me so much, even when you were in the womb. My body was a wreck and putting you in the world wrecked it more. And you didn’t love me, you were just a squalling keening babe. I hated you. You were so small, and you kept crying even when I held you. Nothing I could do satisfied you. One time, I put you to bed with a blanket over your face. You moved the blanket off and kept crying. My husband came home for his three days, and he never knew.” She shifted her gaze to avoid his eyes. 

“We couldn’t feed you. I couldn’t. The bottle just wasn’t as good. You got thinner every day. I wasn’t right then. Do you know what your name means? I named you five days after you were born. I hadn’t slept. Resa, my husband, hadn’t been home since you were born. He was out at the mine.”

“I don’t know what my name means.” He pitied her and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what his name means. He placed her in a box with all the other horrible things that he’d seen in the war. He wished he felt something else. 

“Obi-Wan, No Joy. Your name was a curse. Is a curse. I wish I never named you. I wish Resa had been there to welcome you with me. Maybe then there would’ve been joy in our house.” She sat still for a bit, and he sat across from her. There wasn’t much he could say. He had come here and asked her for his history, and he had learnt what he didn’t really want to know. 

He sensed her getting ready to say some more, and he tried hard to see her as a person. She was like so many other mothers he knew, who he had compassion and sympathy for. She was a product of her circumstances. But unlike those other mothers, she was his, and he had been her child. He took a deep breath. Her fingers, clasping her robes tightly, unclenched a little as she spoke. “I, I renounced you. I renounce you still. You deserve better than my name. I didn’t tell the Jedi who came what your name meant. I don’t even remember their names. I just wanted you gone. I gave you quickly. If I had thought, I would have given you a different name, one better than something I lacked. My mother’s name was Tane-Sam, Many Wonders. It should have been yours, by tradition. It’s your birthright. Was. It’s what I can give you now. If you want it.”

“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You meant it as a curse, but I am not only your child. I am a child of the Jedi and the Force, and to them my name means something else. I appreciate your wish.” He paused. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” 

She studied him. He was beautiful. He looked like her mother too. Red hair and blue eyes, short, intense. If he stared at her she felt afraid, for his eyes seemed to see everything. He was older now than the age her husband died. She didn’t think she could tell him anything else that would mean anything to him. “No. I bless thee in the name of Rahamah and the Heights. Go in peace, Not My Son.”

The words seemed ritual. He wondered how often renunciation happened in their culture that they had the words ready for this situation. He didn’t know how to respond, so he gave her a deep bow. Then he turned and left her sitting at the diner. The door clanged after him, and she sat at the table and wept. 


End file.
